love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

itt gyac knows what posts should be deleted

And for that Mair slur Stet, if you aren't going to apologise for that then fuck you forever arsehole

Hi Calz, I really hope that you've managed to get to bed (and sobered up a bit?) by now. I'm gonna be honest, I'm worried about you. I know you are really angry, and it's completely understandable that you're angry, both for ::gestures at fuckwits in Whitehall:: and ::gestures at life stuff:: - and it's clear that the way the admins bungled handling your whole situation, has made you *more* angry, not less.

My dude, I get it. I'm not going to go all ~bullshit~ at you, because there is a level of rage-inducing fuckwittery beyond which a human cannot NOT be angry. Your rage is real and completely legit.

But I am scared you are going to get yourself banned permanently from ILX, and I would miss you. I know you as an intelligent, insightful, *funny*, piratical maverick with a heap of great stories (the story of your missus vs Kick Knave had me laughing for days). But right now, the way you *express* your rage is scaring even people who care about you. I know the UK politics threads = one of the few places you have for *channeling* that rage, and I'm worried that you are going to lose that, too? Can you find another way of expressing your anger, that doesn't scare the horses?

FWIW, you probably missed this, as it was a fast-moving thread, and he expressed it really badly, but Stet *did* apologise for the Mair comparison. He admitted that it was shit-stirring and apologised for making it:

You didn't have to bring up Thomas Mair at all, and what you personally find uncomfortable is neither here nor there if you weren't the one who banned him.

It's here, because it explains why I support a temp ban for someone describing how they're going to kill a politician. I didn't mean it to be shit-stirring, can see that it is – and am sorry for it.

― stet, Monday, 10 August 2020 20:27

I don't think that makes the situation any better, but I hope it can help you to find some way to make peace?

Hey calz, sad that you feel so fucked off with everyone here - hope it was just the idiot juice talking. I know that it's not all been beer and skittles for you, but I know that there have been ilxors that have been affected by violence including stabbing incidents so might be worth dropping that shit - don't wanna see a good man get banned. Hugs 2 u!

No gif can do this one justice

My message to the Prime Minister: I don’t just want all children back at school next month, I expect them back at school.

No ifs, no buts, no equivocation. https://t.co/Q00nsGFH8u

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) August 16, 2020

I haven't found the strength to read this but I somehow doubt the teaching unions are mentioned in this.

Aren't those the exact same words Boris used?

On the news just now: Boris is going to place adverts saying it's safe for the kids to go back to school

Followed immediately by the news that Ireland have just posted their biggest numbers for months...

Following the science...

Yes, he’s taking a weird headmaster tone to say he’ll demand an explanation if the government doesn’t do what they’ve already said they will. It’s ludicrous as, barring any massive outbreak, schools will definitely go back. If there is enough of a safety reason for the government to u-turn, why would you ever object to them doing so?

it's hard to be the leader of the opposition when the government have a sizable majority and four and a half years left on their term, and there are many different ways to oppose them, all of them flawed or difficult in one way or another, but Starmer seems to have picked the worst strategy possible, who the fuck is happy with this apart from a handful of media twats on twitter? and even they are getting a bit restless.

If the government has a big majority then what’s the point in not opposing them? If tens of thousands have died and they’re still polling 40% then agreeing with them is worse than useless. The LOTO should be trying to set the narrative, not follow it.

Starmer comes across as very out of his depth, politically, even more than Corbyn did. He’s simply not very good at this and it shows. But at least we don’t have a pandemic with a massive recession on the way or anything.

xps to whoever mentioned Ireland: the rising numbers are almost all attributable to food processing plants and factories.

the most charitable spin i could place on Starmer's performances is that he's trying to establish his public persona as the sensible grown-up in contrast to the reckless, feckless Johnson. i don't think Starmz has to put this on, i think the blustery managerial dumbass he presents is just him. there is probably some feeling around the Labour leadership that establishing his credentials is all that matters this far from a general election. one might argue that this is why Starmer and the party are for shit.

Are we absolutely sure that the public doesn't lap this sort of stupid shit up? I mean it reads like Sam Allardyce giving a public dressing down to a fancy but inconsistent midfielder and maybe that's the intention?

If there is enough of a safety reason for the government to u-turn, why would you ever object to them doing so?

I'm guessing reopening schools is one of those things where if it goes well you look like a prick for having opposed it and if it goes badly then it's because the government bungled it and you can make political hay with that later. The tone of this should really be "what is the government doing to ensure that schools can open safely for teachers, pupils and their families?" and I'm not sure why it isn't.

the most charitable spin i could place on Starmer's performances is that he's trying to establish his public persona as the sensible grown-up in contrast to the reckless, feckless Johnson.

If you're playing the long game this does make sense. I don't know how you measure that. Is he succeeding in this, who knows? I don't really know what proportion of the public have even heard of him

Or could pick him out in a lineup, probably more what I mean.

it's *possible* that a section of the public loves this shit, tho personally i don't think that's sufficient reason to do it and Starmz only wishes he had the man of the people gravitas of a Big Sam

your last question is more on point, but i'm not sure the difference between forensically vacuous and just vacuous is worth pondering

The point on tone absolutely correct. Starmer doesn’t want to be the person held responsible for kids not going back to school or look obstructive but, rather than positioning himself as the government’s supervisor, Labour should be outlining how they should be going back and setting up a situation where they can call the government reckless for not following their advice.

Alright Mark Hughes then but good lord no one wants to be Mark Hughes. If he drops down the scale to Phil Brown then that's it.

it's starting to look like Mr Starmer is just not very good, even by what we might guess are his own terms

Even Rentoul hates this lol.

ah well every party needs their IDS period

oh god that means Michael Howard is next

mind you Starmz kind of combines both of them

Sir Haircut hasn't even called for Williamson to be sacked over the A-levels fiasco has he?

you have to fear though that if and when a challenge comes, it's from the phillips/cooper wing

don't fear anything tbh, fucked is fucked

to quote Artists United Against Apartheid "meanwhile people are dying and giving up hope"

Labour are presumably reluctant to call for sackings, as opportunistic and misleading as their every intervention in the exams thing has been, when they’ve presided over an extremely similar situation in Wales.

I've been assuming he's waiting for some Tory backbenchers to pipe up and say the same thing on the basis that it would be more embarrassing.

give em enough rope to hang everyone

Alexa, play "Things Can Only Get Better"

Right decided to actually go through the Starmer 10 pledges and see if he's actually stuck to any of them
1, No pic.twitter.com/NYterGZxT5

— Low Key Mash (@terryfuck45) August 15, 2020

Correlation doesn’t imply causation and all that but Starmer appears to have just changed Labour’s policy on A-Level grades in England after being shouted at on Twitter by Alastair Campbell.

Wait what?

I am beyond rage at government incompetence/venality re exams etc. But I’m getting not far behind on rage front at @UKLabour inability to take them apart and force change on it. They are the Opposition. Not commentators saying how shit things are. Plenty of us can do that outside

— ALASTAIR CAMPBELL (@campbellclaret) August 16, 2020

Starmer now saying that all teacher grading should stand.

I mean it could be that or it could be the flak he’s getting after writing in the MoS.

starting to wonder whether he'll see out 2021

When the Government is on the ropes over the A-level fiasco (and on course to repeat that fiasco over GCSEs next week) and when the eviction ban ends on Monday with thousands of tenants in arrears, to change the subject to what happens on 7 September is a curious priority.

— Andrew Fisher (@FisherAndrew79) August 16, 2020

Absolute magic

Can someone explain how @jessphillips became an American TikTok teenager meme having been labelled as PTA Cheryl? pic.twitter.com/hKLZpNbnH4

— Alejandro (@adb0wen) August 15, 2020

the role she was born to play

terrible misogyny, I'm appalled

It’s time in the short term to maximise the pressure on government to extend the evictions ban but also to open up the longer term discussion of housing provision and the role landlordism plays in distorting access to the housing market & housing supply. https://t.co/0L06NQbLEx

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) August 16, 2020

CALL IT BY ITS NAME

Tory MPs told by whips there is announcement coming around 1600 on A-Levels in England. Spoke to a few Ministers who are confident there will be a change of policy today but not sure to what extent #dangerzone "This has been lamentable, avoidable and forseeable" said one

— Ross Kempsell (@rosskempsell) August 17, 2020

People weren’t able to drive during lockdown so I’ve written an algorithm to send speeding tickets to random drivers based on historic speeding records in their area.

— Matt Day (@reformattday) August 16, 2020

Let’s just get individual police officers to use their insight into the local community to give out the fines they assume people would have racked up if they’d been allowed to drive instead.

It definitely looks like they're going to revert to teacher grading, which is going to open up an interesting series of challenges - not least what universities who have offered more places they can fulfill, on the assumption that a proportion of the learners aren't going to get their grade, are going to do.

The inherent unfairness of teachers with wildly different standards applying the grades can probably be brushed under the carpet. idk what happens if the grade awarded is higher than the teacher-predicted one but that's likely to be a relatively small number,

Also not sure what happens if we're here again in nine months with exams that need to be cancelled.

Here in France the bac exams were cancelled also, and its notes were instead determined by committees who used as the basis the grades earned during the school year. I gather that there were no such committees in England?

I should add, among those grades earned during the school year are the bac blancs, which seem to be what you are talking about with "mock exams" in England.

It's not a lack of committees, it's a lack of grades throughout the year. The major problem is that in 2018, the government basically moved to an 'all your eggs in one basket' model of linear assessments on the assumption that ongoing assessment and courseware were reducing standards. You have one big set of tests at the end of the year and that's that. iirc, when i did my A-Levels, something like 60% in some subjects had already been determined before the final term. Now that would be 0%. There's not even a consistent approach to mock exams.

The bac, aiui, doesn't have a process of total standardisation either.

The Guardian ran a piece comparing how European systems dealt with the same problem and the only one that i can see fitting the UK linear model would have been Germany - which made the kids all come to school and take exams like nothing was wrong.

Wow, so no notes during the year. We don't even do that in our universities!

The bac is becoming less standardized starting with the 2019-2020 academic year, just ending. My son is part of this first class of the new system. Briefly, while the bac used to be determined by only the exams at the end of the year, now it's calculated in part by the notes during the school year ("control continu"). So with the rona this year it wasn't as systematically difficult to move to using entirely control continu to determine the bac scores, though we hope that next year the exams will return. Bac notes don't matter very much---what matters is whether you get your bac or not, since that's the determiner of whether you're admissible to university or not. The grands écoles are different, and I don't want to clog this thread with such foreign nonsense. Simply said, I was surprised to read that there are no notes during the year. I suppose that is mostly how it is at UK universities as well.